The present invention relates to an information processing device configured to request a printer to carry out a printing process, a printing system, and a printing control method.
From the viewpoint of global environmental protection focused in recent years, the printing technology field is increasingly demanded to save resources including printing materials used by printers such as printing sheet and coloring material.
Conventional printers have functions of reducing the number of printing sheets to be used for printing, such as an aggregate printing function for collectively printing a plurality of print pages on one side of a printing sheet, and a double-sided printing function for printing images on both sides of a printing sheet. The aggregate printing function and the double-sided printing function can be utilized in combination. Some printers of the type having a color printing function can reduce the consumption of coloring material, such as color ink and color toner, by printing a color image data item of less importance as an achromatic image, thereby making it possible to save resources.
Recent printers have an increasing number of functional items (including the above-described aggregate printing function, double-sided printing and color printing function) that can be set before the start of a printing process as they are rendered multi-functional, thus forcing users to perform complicated setting operations for the respective functions. As a result, the users often do printing in a previously established print form without performing such setting operations for the respective functions, which results in insufficient utilization of those functions which can contribute to the saving of resources used by printers.
A known arrangement for improving the user's operability is such that before the start of printing, the energy saving degree attained by a print form with settings currently established for the respective functions is checked and, if a predetermined energy saving degree is not reached, a dialog is displayed for receiving entry of a change to another print form for improving the energy saving degree (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-304092 for example).
Another known arrangement is capable of aggregate calculation of the number of printing sheets reduced and the printing sheet saving rate on a user-by-user basis (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-248576 for example).
However, among users who intentionally use the functions of reducing the number of printing sheets to be used in printing (such as the above-described aggregate printing function and the double-sided printing function), there are users who repeat wasteful printing. Only with the arrangement which performs aggregate calculation of the number of printing sheets reduced and the printing sheet saving rate and then outputs the result of the aggregate calculation as described in the latter patent document, such users who repeat wasteful printing cannot be made aware that reducing wasteful printing is effective means for improving the degree of contribution to the resources saving.
A feature of the present invention is to provide an information processing device, a printing system and a printing control method which are capable of making users aware that reducing wasteful printing is substantially effective means for saving resources even though they are users who repeat wasteful printing and hence exhibit a substantially low degree of contribution to the resources saving.